


nightmares are more real than you think

by CaffinatedDragon



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Mianite - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Blood, anything beyond june for the mianite isles does Not exist i do not see it, dark!dream brainrot thats why, this is before November 16 but also before the festival, this was a mistake, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27869901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffinatedDragon/pseuds/CaffinatedDragon
Summary: Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months into a full year. And still Dream's friends don't seem to notice how he's hurting, don't seem to remember that the SMP washis(was, because at this point nothing belongs to him not even his friends), don't seem to care that he's slowly but steadily spiraling. And then he makes a deal.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	nightmares are more real than you think

**Author's Note:**

  * For [transvav](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transvav/gifts).



> merry christmas, vav. sorry this took so long to make and that its badly written

It was incredibly lonely in Dream’s hand-dug base. No one’s visited in ages, even though Dream had shown his friends where it was in the beginning, back when it was just him and them. The base itself holds countless hidden rooms and secret passageways that only Dream knows of, but it almost never gets much usage beyond him stocking up on supplies that’re never used or borrowed. His bed is in an obsidian panic room that has bubble elevators for quick access out, but again, he never uses it. Dream has so much _stuff._

But he never uses it. It’s become habit for him to stock up on more things than he needs to, a holdover from the first war. None of his friends ever come around to borrow anything, even spending hours at the spider grinder when they all know full well that Dream’s got chestfulls of string and spider eyes both. It hurts, knowing that none of them trust him enough to come around anymore.

“I should probably go organize my shit,” Dream sighs, getting up from his spot perched on top of a crafting table and walking through the living room that’s gaining a thin film of dust and the corridors leading to the storage system. He was pretty shit at redstone, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have neat storage rooms of double-chests. “It’s been a while.” He should really stop hoarding items especially since the other people on the SMP had a bit of a thing with thievery (even though Dream had made it illegal), but he couldn’t help himself. 

The fact that every passing day grew more tense in both Pogtopia and Manburg didn’t help matters one bit. Schlatt was doing who knows what in the White House while Tubbo and Quackity struggled under him -even though Quackity helped him rise in the first place- and the rest of the former L’manburg suffered. The Badlands were doing… something, Dream wasn’t really sure about that faction since it was pretty new, but he knew Sam would be someone to look out for. The redstoner was also a very prolific grinder, to the point where his stores were probably matching Dream’s own.

God, why was he even thinking about potential matchups? While Wilbur’s steady spiral into madness was something Dream wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole (even though a part of him delighted in the karma of Wilbur starting to be regarded in the same way Dream had been in the beginning of the first war) he was also pretty sure he wouldn’t go completely bonkers. Tommy was still with him after all, and– 

The darkness in the corner of the storage room moves, and Dream has his sword pointed at it before another second passes. It continues to move in a very not normal way, shifting into tendrils, then spikes, then starts rippling like a wave. What the fuck. Dream knows for a fact that the Void isn’t sentient (countless Manhunts that reached the End proved it again and again) but here the absence of light is, looking like a discount ocean.

 _Oh, hunter,_ an unplaceable voice croons in his ears, and Dream whips around to try and find the source. He can’t see any, but the sound has directionality that’s coming from– the darkness? _All alone without your friends. How quaint. How pitiful._

And now the darkness in the corner of the room is talking to him. Dream’s definitely lost it. “Not interested in what you’re selling.”

 _I can give them back to you, you know._ It ignores him, and the darkness takes on a different shade, the same color as ash. _All I want is the Captain dead. If that happens, I’ll bring back your friends of the past, when all in your realm was well._

Okay, how the _fuck_ does it know that he’s the admin? And the Captain… that could only be CaptainSparklez. The man had never logged onto the server even though Dream had whitelisted him ever since Tubbo joined– the boy had asked and he had done it without another thought. That whatever this being was wanted him dead was… strange, especially considering that Dream was pretty sure he only had one life, period. Worrying. 

Dream checked the whitelist. Nothing was out of place. No one that wasn’t supposed to be on it was there, so whatever the living darkness was– it wasn’t a player. Wasn’t anything he knew about either, nothing Dream had ever seen or read about. He was on his own. 

_Quite a simple deal I have for you, little hunter. Just end that man’s life by the blade, and I will give you back your friends. Don’t you want that?_ The darkness morphs into a cat for some reason. _I see how you live, how everyone turned their backs on you because of one man’s words. I can make it so that it never happened. I can give them back to you._

It's tempting, oh so very tempting. Like Tantalus and the fruit he can never reach, the water he can never drink. Dream is Tantalus and the fruit is his friends, the water how the SMP used to be. 

It's a good deal. Too good, in fact. There’s gotta be a catch… but is the catch just Dream killing the Captain in the first place? After all he was pretty hard to kill, being the nigh legendary figure that he was. The Captain’s been around long enough to recognize any traps Dream might have pulled if the specification of using bladed weapons hadn’t been made, and he was no slouch at combat. The catch could also be catching the Captain off-guard enough to fight him 1v1, since if he went onto the SMP the others would gravitate to the man– _argh,_ there were too many factors. There was a catch, and Dream didn’t know what it was.

“Give me some time to think about it.” Dream pulls out his communicator and starts tapping away.

[Dream]: if you weren’t sure about a deal would you still take it?

Dream waits for a reply, but doesn’t get one. He lets the message sit for a good few hours, doing routine maintenance on his weapons in the meantime and organizing his chests while ignoring the tight feeling in his gut. In the end, it’s not even one of the other hunters that reply, it’s _Punz._ Dream had forgotten he was even in the chat.

[Punz]: you’re Dream, dude. You always know what you’re doing. I don’t doubt that you’d be able to figure something out.

 _But I don’t,_ Dream wants to scream into the silence, _I don’t know what to do, haven’t known since after the first war where the place I was supposed to be safe in wasn’t safe anymore._

He doesn’t know what to do. This was so different to the split-second decisions that were the difference between life or death in manhunts, this was someone _else’s_ life, someone that didn’t have 3 lives but only 1. What the living darkness waiting patiently in the corner of his eye wanted with the Captain Dream didn’t know, but since it involved killing the man when he inevitably came onto the server it probably wasn’t good.

Sapnap thinks he doesn’t care about them, George thinks he hates them, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth but what can Dream do about it? From day one Wilbur had vilified him, made him look like a threat when all he ever wanted on the SMP was to relax and have fun with his friends. No one ever _listens_ to him anymore like he needs them too, they only listen when he screams and threatens _because_ it's the only way they listen. It’s too much for Dream to handle alone for much longer.

2 more hours pass with no other reply. An offhand glance confirms to Dream that yes, the weird living darkness is still there, still waiting ever so patiently (so unlike the others on the SMP). No one else in the chat pop up. When he goes to check the list of people in it, all he sees is Punz and himself (and doesn’t that hurt, to know that his friends had left but Punz stayed. And loyalty didn’t mean anything to anyone on the server, not anymore).

Well. It’s not like doing this will impact any of his relationships in the server, they’re all broken down anyways besides Techno, and Techno wouldn’t care. Tubbo would be absolutely furious with him but expect it anyways because Dream was Dream and of course he would do something like that. “That deal still open?” He asks, and the dark smiles, the shroomlight throwing the too-sharp too-large teeth on the darkness’ cat form into harsh contrast.

 _But of course, masked one._ The glint of glass catches Dream’s eye, and he reflexively catches the frosty bottle that hurtles toward him. It’s full of a dark viscous liquid that looks more like a Blindness potion than anything, and Dream frowns at it. _The consumption of the potion will solidify our deal. Kill the Captain with a blade, and I can get you your friends from before back._

Dream’s kill wouldn’t count to the Captain’s one life, since there was nothing significant about some random person you don’t know about just going up and killing you. And if the catch is catastrophic… it's not like he has anything left to lose.

Dream uncorks the bottle and knocks it back, almost gagging at how it slides down his throat but he manages to swallow it. The second he does a numbing cold spreads through his veins, the same cold that he’d felt linger on the bottle. It’s the cold of the darkness, and Dream can feel a weight settle against his mind in his head. He can’t go back now.

Weeks pass. Dream spends them actively grinding out the best items he can get his hands on, and at some point abandons his original base entirely, relocating everything held inside to small caches spread across the immediate spawn. There’s a larger cache somewhere to the east of spawn a dozen thousand blocks or so out, but all that contains is his bed. It’s much too far out to justify going to in order to sleep, and it has his spawnpoint. So he just doesn’t sleep.

 _Your friends might just take everything in one swoop,_ the darkness murmurs in Dream’s ears, _best not to risk it before you fulfil your end of the deal and I mine._ And honestly, he can’t see a flaw in that logic. 

Things change, drastically. Schlatt calls for a festival, and Quackity distributes invitations while Tubbo labors away at the decorations. Wilbur falls further into madness, Fundy burns down the flag of the former L’manburg to the rage of Niki, and Technoblade grows ever stronger. The Badlands prepare for what will come, and Dream sees Awesamdude venture into the Nether while ferrying Tommy one time. He doesn’t know how the hunters are doing. Whenever Dream tries to ask, he gets turned away with not so subtle declarations of promising to meet someone else, so he buries himself in even more grinding to distract himself from the aching hurt.

 _Let me be your vassal,_ Wilbur says with a manic glint in his eyes, and Dream doesn’t even have to think twice before replying with a curt no and getting out of there as fast as possible. He may want Manburg gone, but _blowing it up_ isn’t the answer. And the darkness can’t patch up craters in the ground that go to bedrock. Or, y’know, dead friends. He _does_ have the gunpowder for it, through ages of idle creeper killing. But it leaves too much collateral damage.

Grinding grinding, Nether, grinding, maybe try and contact the others again, more grinding-

**[CaptainSparklez joined the game.]**

Dream freezes at the bright yellow text on his communicator, halfway through the motions of eating a golden carrot. Ah. So the man finally joined for the first time. It wouldn’t do to teleport to the man right away and scare his target off, plus everyone else on the server would probably warn him of Dream’s existence. The Captain wouldn’t want to be under Schlatt’s rule even with Tubbo there, so he would probably strike out as a loner.

That meant he would have to lure the Captain into the arena he’d built beforehand. The walls and roof were made of barrier blocks and it was at bedrock level, buried deep underground to prevent anyone from accidentally discovering it. Getting the Captain there would be a challenge all on its own since just saying ‘I want to show you something’ would be highly suspicious.

 _Might as well go greet your target,_ the darkness whispers, and Dream 

“Hey.” Dream waves at the Captain, and the look he gets in return almost makes him want to curl into a ball. It’s shock that very quickly changes into astonishment and then immediate hatred that looks almost reflexive, as if his very presence disgusts the man. That fades in favor of faint guilt and worry though, so Dream probably just reminded the man of someone.

He decides it's time to go when Tubbo’s gaze starts to turn suspicious, and Riptide-boosts his Ender Pearl all the way outside Manburg’s borders to land on top of a birch tree.

_You whisper to CaptainSparklez: i want to show you something. meet me at these coords in 3 days at 4 pm._

Dream gets no reply, but he knows that the message was received. If this doesn’t work, he can always just teleport the Captain into the arena manually. It would make a 1v1 harder, yes, because it was a pretty hefty energy consumer. Hm.

“I can’t just end him by a TNT minecart or something?” Dream asks, voice swallowed by the sound of rushing water from the river nearby.

 _No. Only by the blade in a proper duel to the death,_ the darkness insists, and Dream resigns himself to waiting until the time’s up. Who knows, maybe the Captain will get netherite or something.

And get netherite the Captain does, at the exact day Dream specified (he can’t catch a fucking break). He suspects Tubbo gave the man diamond to start with, because there was no achievement for an iron pickaxe in the world chat. The Captain also might’ve told someone about the message, but that’s a problem Dream will deal with if it arises.

He walks to the coordinates, and is greeted by the Captain himself waiting with a sword in hand. He looks pretty nervous. “Hey. Glad you actually showed up.”

“Hey, Dream…” The man trails off. “What did you want to show me?”

“Over here.” Dream breaks a grass block and falls through the hole, the water block at the bottom breaking his fall. He looks back up. “There’s water, don’t worry.” He moves out of the way in time for the Captain to fall down too, and the two of them continue on down the 2 by 1 hallway Dream had constructed in tense silence. After 5 minutes or so of constant walking, they make it to the decoy storage area. It's a 5 by 5 that’s 3-blocks tall, with bedrock speckling the floor since it was at y5. Shroomlights lined the floor, stretching beyond the walls where no one could see it.

“So… did you want to talk about something?” The Captain asks.

“Yes, actually.” Dream steps towards the chest and flicks it open before slamming it shut again. The sound of redstone going off echoes through the small area, and in less than a second the TNT inlaid around the arena goes off. Deafening explosions ring around them and cobblestone rains down from the skies and from every side. When the dust settled, the Captain was standing shock-still in a much larger area, the chest long-exploded. Pistons make him whip around to the entrance, and dust billows in just such a way to show that barrier blocks were moved. Dream switches to his axe. “Your death.” 

The sound of his axe clashing against the Captain’s sword rings through the box of barrier blocks, and he blocks another strike before trying again. The Captain avoids it again because of course he does, the Swiftness potion the man had just splashed down was for more than just faster movement after all. Dream vaults over a 2-high of cobblestone in order to slam it down onto the Captain’s shield, and he knows that it’s out of commission for the next few seconds because of the way the Captain pales slightly.

Then Dream’s own Swiftness potion runs out because he was off with his aim, and he splashes down another one but has to dodge an arrow aimed right for his head that's trailing dark red particles– a harming arrow. By the time he’s upright again the Captain’s shield is back up and he’s back to square one. Again.

The feeling of eyes watching him makes Dream glance to the right. The section of the wall with the corridor that led to the arena had been expanded upon. Now the corridor wasn’t just a 2 by 1, it was massive. Large enough for the entire server to watch them fight. He nearly pays for the momentary distraction with a slash to the arm, but he blocks it in time.

Spectators already? So the Captain _had_ told people about it.

“C’mon Dream, stop this!” The Captain yelps, ducking under an axe swing and firing off an arrow from a bow. Dream doesn’t know his actual name, but that’s fine. No one tells him anything these days anyways. “I just joined, it hasn’t even been a week! Don’t you care about the SMP?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“What!? But you created this–”

“They don’t care, so why should I? There’s no point. None of them care that it's my SMP in the first place.” Dream blocks the arrow with his shield and fires off his crossbow. _“Was_ my SMP in the first place.” _Kill him kill him kill him,_ whispers the darkness in his ears, and the next swing of his axe trails black mist. It doesn’t hit. The Captain’s eyes widen with alarm.

“The hell happened to you!?”

“A deal,” Dream says, and doesn’t deign to answer any more of the Captain’s questions because the way the darkness had whispered of his target spoke of a familiarity from both sides. The reaction the Captain had had upon seeing him also couldn’t have just popped up out of nowhere. An arrow of Harming hits him in the shoulder, but Dream pulls it out and splashes down a Healing potion.

“How did it _get_ here though?” The Captain mutters to himself, which gives Dream the feeling that he shouldn’ve have heard that.

“Does it matter? It wouldn’t have changed anything.” Dream’s chestplate makes the Captain’s sword bounce off, the Thorns making the man wince but not enough to leave anything open. “It got here. It found me. It’s been here for months.”

“No one noticed?”

“Why would they care about it in the first place? It’s me.” That makes the Captain visibly uneasy, and a misstep allows Dream to get a good slash in the leg.

“They care about you!” The Captain says as he blocks another axe strike and takes a swipe of his own that Dream dodges. “They’re your friends, aren’t they?”

Dream growls, and attempts to slam his fist into the Captain’s gut only for it to impact cobblestone instead. “Shut _up.”_ Raw emotion roils around in his gut, and he feels like an exposed wire.

And Dream can feel their gazes burning him, his hunters -not your hunters anymore, they don’t care anymore, says the voice in his mind that he knows is right- filled with rage and fear and disgust at him because this is wrong and not okay. Their eyes bore into his mind and he knows that they don’t care anymore that they hate him that they wish he were gone just like the rest of them think that he’s a monster they cannot trust and it’s _true_ but what can Dream even do–

“They care about you, kid!” The Captain insists again, and something inside Dream _shatters,_ worse than that first horrible realization that he was all alone ~~(he hasn’t been called a kid in forever).~~

“NO THEY DON’T!” Dream howls, slashing out to the side at the Captain’s shield arm. The hit doesn’t connect so he lunges in, switching his axe for a sword mid-strike. “NONE OF THEM EVER CARE!” That hit doesn’t connect either, so he switches back to his axe and takes a swipe at the Captain’s face. That doesn’t connect either, but Dream can barely concentrate on that over the hot mess of emotion rising in his chest and choking him, much less the feeling of the darkness creeping over him. “AND NONE OF THEM EVER WILL, BECAUSE I’M DREAM! I’M THEIR _NIGHTMARE!”_ His voice breaks, and hot tears spill out, cascading down his face. _“THAT’S ALL I’LL EVER BE!”_

The Captain looks more panicked, now. Dream wonders why. It's not like he cares, after all, he’s just trying to make him stop because he’s the villain. The bad guy everybody hates. 

All he’d wanted was a place where he could be safe. Relax and have fun with his friends, goof around, be with people he cared about. And then Wilbur Soot and Tommyinnit crashed into the SMP with all the grace of a meteorite, burning whatever fun and safety it had brought and taking all of the friends Dream thought cared about him with it and bringing in people that hated his existence from the get go. 

“THEY ALL HATE ME! I’M THE FUCKING MONSTER THEY SEE IN THEIR SLEEP,” A thrown potion of harming hits Dream takes a slash to the arm he doesn’t care, “THE BEAST TO BE KILLED,” Dream slashes down with his sword and takes a stab to the side in exchange for a cut across the chest, “THE GODDAMN ENEMY! THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT ME FOR _JACK SHIT! NOT ANYMORE!”_ Not since Wilbur started saying that he was the root of all evil in the SMP. Not since George and Sapnap and Bad and Ant started coming by less and less until Dream couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen any of them face to face.

Eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes _everywhere_ and staring and judging but none of the owners willing to talk to him, to help him or push past the fear and judgement they’d built up of him.

 _They don’t care, they don’t care, they don’t care._ The words run through Dream’s head like a sick, twisted chant as he trembles with hurt and rage and raw emotions even as he attacks and defends against a living legend. Tears pour down the face no one can see, the noise of battle covering up the sound of stifled sobs that Dream’s trying his damned best to suppress. He chokes on hiccups and the salty tears, and pretends the ache in his chest is just the cold of the darkness and not the hurt of betrayal rearing its head again.

To the rest of them, Dream _can’t_ hurt. He’s the one pulling the strings, he always knows what to do, he’s a leader of the ‘bad guys.’ Why did his friends leave him all alone? When did they start thinking of him like that? They never bothered to check in, not even once, never saw that he was hurting from the countless wars and accusatory eyes that still stare at him (they stare at him right now from every angle).

“I know you’re hurting Dream, but this isn’t it, this isn’t the way you should go about this! Talk it out with them!”

“THEY DON’T FUCKING _LISTEN_ TO ME ANYMORE! THEY DON’T WANT TO–” 

Dream’s head suddenly spikes with pain, and he stumbles, one hand flying up to the side of his head. Part of his palm brushes against his mask, and when it leaves it comes back covered in inky black the same color as the darkness. The Captain takes advantage of his mistake and runs him clean through with a trident. Dream palms a pearl and hucks it as hard as he can, and it collides with the barrier blocks at the far end of the arena and slams him into the invisible walls.

Wow that hurts a lot. Dream presses against where the razor-sharp tines of hard prismarine speared him and jerks his hand back with a hiss when the open wounds burn where he touched them. A gapple is more than enough to heal the damage, but it tastes so off. Overwhelming bitterness coats his mouth even though Dream knows a gapple is faint but satisfying sweetness. Was darkness leaking from his mask? That didn’t make any sense, the cold only affected _him…_ oh. It was probably because he wore it all the time now. Dream could’ve done without the knowledge that the darkness tastes bitter though.

The Captain stares at Dream with horror, but visibly steels himself and goes in again. They trade blows for what feels like forever, and eventually both of them run out of arrows. It’s just relentless melee combat, with neither side willing to let up an inch. A harsher cold than the one that stayed when he drank the potion starts to crawl through his body, and it dulls the pain to the point where Dream can’t really even feel it. As the battle drags on and on and on it creeps in more and more. Black mist surrounds Dream, coating his weapons and giving him extra reach.

It doesn’t help at all. Whatever wounds the Captain gets are ignored by the man and later healed by a splash potion. If anything, the mist makes him more determined even as he switches between yelling at Dream to stop fighting him and telling him that the others cared about him.

 _No one cared. No one ever cared when I started to fall,_ Dream thinks blearily after the Captain finishes his newest spiel about the others, his axe hanging from his right hand loosely as his left hand reflexively splashes down potions that mend the wounds he truly can’t feel anymore. _I just wish someone cared again. I wish they cared again. I wish_ **_I_ ** _cared again._

 _I can give you your friends back,_ whispers the voice in his mind, honey-sweet even as the harsher cold crawls up his face. _I just need you to kill him. It’s that simple._

Ah. Right, that had been the deal. Dream would kill the Captain, and he would get his friends from before back, the ones that cared. He wouldn’t be alone. But killing the Captain was proving harder than he first thought, he was running out of potions, and Dream was just so _tired._

_Just one good hit and your end of the deal will be done, and then I will be able to fulfil mine. Just one hit, Dream. That would be so simple._

“It _would_ be easy,” Dream mutters under his breath, tightening his grip on his axe and refilling the slots in his hotbar. “If he would just shut up and stop being so distracting. It’s hard to kill him.”

_You’re the hunter, are you not? You know your prey and kill it as fast you can, with swift strikes and swift pace. So kill your prey._

A shudder runs through Dream, and he fights back the wave of nauseous, all-consuming cold that washes through him. Something much thicker than water starts to gather at his eyes, cold as ice.

 _You’re running out of time,_ **_Clay._ **

And Dream freezes, because how can it know that name? He’s never told anyone about it, his real name, because what it implies is _weakness._ Being soft, being malleable, being shaped and formed under someone else’s hands and that’s why he runs and runs and _runs,_ to be free and become what he wants and not what anyone else wants.

But even with the threat (and it _is_ a threat, Dream’s not stupid) ringing in his ears… Dream just... can’t. He’s numb to the core, and while his body’s fine his mind is utterly exhausted. He can’t recall the last time he’s slept, and the fight’s been dragging on for a full day, judging from the fact that the sun’s peaking over the horizon (he’s been living in the adrenaline of close quarters combat for so long he couldn’t tell). He’s so tired. It’s overwhelming.

The cold creeps up his head and Dream’s head involuntarily tilts to the side, thrown off by sudden and severe lightheadedness. The feeling comes with a sense of sudden clarity in the wake of the rising pressure against his mind– he knows what the catch is, now.

He failed to kill the Captain, and the darkness wants the man dead so badly it’s going to take Dream’s body to do it. The deal was just so that it would have a vessel skilled in combat, to lure him into trying to do the work for it. The minute he drank the potion, Dream was doomed. 

He can’t find the energy to care even as the last traces of warmth are suffocated by the cold. Everything suddenly became stiff and heavy, and even when Dream slumped his body didn’t relax. It was like he was a puppet being controlled by another force– ah right, he is. Why is it so hard to think straight?

Dream’s right hand grabs the blade of the incoming axe with a gloved hand without a care for the razor-sharp edge, and in one smooth move pulls it out of the Captain’s grip using his own weight and kicks him in the torso to send him flying.

“Oh, so he wasn’t actually trying.” His mouth moved on its own, his voice sharp and warped beyond recognition. The pain Dream really should be feeling in his hand isn’t there. “Hm. Well, it’s not like he had any energy left at this point anyways. Having no sleep while fighting at this calibur will do that to a human, I’m sure. No matter.”

Between one blink and the next his body is hurtling towards the Captain with sword drawn and crossbow raised, and the fight renews all over again. The sound of netherite screeching against netherite rings in his ears, and Dream feels like he’s tethered to his body by a loose balloon string– snip it and he’ll float away from his body forever.

They were right all along, Dream _is_ a monster. He’s not even fighting the darkness jerking his body around like a puppet dancing on its strings ~~(a faint hatred stirs a weak spark of energy in him but it oh so quickly snuffs itself out)~~ and getting closer and closer to killing the Captain each time. It’s relieving to see -or at least Dream doesn’t feel more tired at the fact- that the Captain stopped talking and actually started going on the agressive. It seems like neither of them were really fighting to kill.

His left hand abandons the shield in favor of two-handed axe strikes after a forever of fighting that Dream had duly acknowledged through the haze, and the momentum that starts to build up from each swing is making everything more hazy. The sound of his mask breaking lifts some of the fog, but it crashes back down all over again. Time passes in the sound of blocks breaking and a shield blocking arrows, everything dull and unconcerning and slow. The glow of enchanted armor and weapons isn’t bright at all.

It’s so cold and Dream is so _tired–_

His head is slammed into the side of the barrier so hard Dream feels the rest of his body ragdoll, and he catches a glimpse of the Captain’s desperate face before the man shoves the neck of a glass bottle down his throat. Whatever’s inside it burns like lava as it goes down, and the darkness reacts badly. The cold wars against the warmth and it feels like Dream’s being torn apart from the inside out because _this_ pain he can feel, a steadily building fire melting ice and giving back control over every facet of his body. He falls to the ground and catches himself with his arms, shaking. Something forces itself up Dream’s throat.

“Dream? You back?”

Dream’s too busy hacking up black liquid to give an answer to that. It wells up from his eyes too, draining the cold in his head and with it the haze in his mind. He can feel the darkness’ presence getting smaller and smaller and smaller– it's gone. Cold and warmth both forcefully leave his body in the form of the tar, leaving him feeling more drained than before. But his body is his again.

His arms buckle, and Dream falls face-first into the pool of now-harmless darkness. It’s been so long since he’s gone without the cold in his limbs and other presence in his mind that the sudden absence of it is overwhelming. The silence in the arena is deafening.

The sound of a familiar voice, however, is not.

“Dream? You good–? What the _hell_ happened to you!?”

 _Illumina?_ Dream can’t even muster up the energy to open his eyes much less speak, but the sound of footsteps approach on their own. _Wha– how’d he get into the arena? He should’ve spawned up on the surface…_ When trying to think about it just gives him a headache, Dream abandons that train of thought. 

“Oh god your mask, it’s shattered! And what the hell is that black stuff around you it looks like poison! Where’s Sapnap and George?! Do they not even know what shape you’re in oh my god–” Two strong hands pull him up, and Illumina slings him onto his back like a sack of potatoes. “Fuck where do I go why are you so cold–”

 _It’s so warm,_ Dream thinks blearily before he passes out.


End file.
